Words
by the ramblin rose
Summary: Mandrea AU. Oneshot. Words are amazing things. They can have the power to frighten people, the power to build and tear down, but they can also have the power to soothe. Merle/Andrea.


**AN: This "scene" came from a tumblr prompt that wanted Merle and Andrea with one of them being diagnosed with a terminal illness.**

 **I own nothing from the show.**

 **I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!**

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They had been together seventeen years, but she never reminded him of that. She skipped anniversaries. She ignored them entirely. Other women needed things like cards, flowers, and chocolates. They needed jewelry and gifts and shiny trinkets to mark the passing of their time with a lover or a husband. Andrea didn't need those things at all, but she did need Merle. And Merle? He needed her too, even if he didn't like to use the words.

Words frightened Merle. Ticking off years, too, frightened him. Whereas most people saw the accumulation of years spent just between them and one chosen lover as something to be proud of, as an accomplishment to be celebrated, Merle saw it as the ticking closer to some sort of doomsday.

He was afraid that, the moment they acknowledged that things were actually going pretty well or even that they were pretty close to perfect, everything would simply self-destruct. If they didn't point it out, though, and they simply went on living in the happiness that they had found together, things would continue to go well. He saw relationships like those optical illusions where the image could only be viewed out of the corner of one's eye. A relationship could only be successful if it were viewed, so to speak, out of the corner of the eye.

They were married—officially and legally—in the state of Georgia. That had happened thirteen years ago. They'd been married by a Justice of the Peace in private. The wedding was between them and those that had to be present to make it official. That way? It wasn't flaunting their happiness. It wasn't throwing it in the faces of others. There was no reason that whatever power Merle believed was responsible for ruining confirmed and acknowledged happiness would ever want to bother them.

Except, it seemed, that whatever this power was had wanted to bother them a great deal.

Still, they managed to get through everything, even if it did take a toll on them from time to time, and they managed to so without flaunting their bad moments any more than they did their good.

They bought the house before they married. When everything on the house that could possibly fell apart, did? They fixed it. They married in private. They told everyone, but with no more interest than if they were mentioning that they had picked up an extra loaf of bread at the store. They bought the shop for Merle. Andrea got a good job at a law office. When the unexplained fire took the shop? They cleaned up the mess and they rebuilt. When Andrea lost her job? She found another.

They wanted children, but nothing had seemed to work for them. They didn't want to foster and they had never been selected for adoption. Whatever powers that might have given them their own child had simply never thought it was a good idea. They'd eventually given up. They doted on their dogs, instead, and Merle teased Andrea about treating the three mixed-up pound pups like they were her natural born children.

Year in and year out—Andrea only secretly counting them as they flew by at a rather alarming speed—that's how things went for Merle and Andrea. Things fell apart and they stuck them back together with duct tape and chicken wire. The repairs held, usually, but sometimes they had to roll up their sleeves and conquer something again. And again.

But it didn't matter. Fix it once or fix it a thousand times, as long as they were fixing it together all was well with the world.

Andrea gave Merle a soft to place land. She gave him arms to hold him—hands that were allowed to touch him in ways that he had never trusted anyone else to really touch him before. She told him things that he needed to hear and she provided him the little daily pleasures that made him feel—no matter how simple they actually were—as though he were truly king of a castle instead of an average, working man living in a two bedroom brick home.

Merle gave Andrea a security that she'd never believed she could feel. He gave her strength. He was hard enough that, when she wanted to quit, he never let her. He never let it be an option. Dixons weren't quitters and she was, by the power of the state of Georgia, a Dixon.

Merle was Andrea's rock, and maybe she was his.

The vocabulary didn't matter that much. It was the feeling that mattered. It was the way that she slept at night, and the way that she knew he slept at night, that mattered. What they called it? Or even if they called it anything at all? That just didn't matter. The words were, sometimes, too much.

Words had a way of being so much more than some people gave them credit for.

Just like the words that had come over the telephone some ten or fifteen minutes before, since Andrea had lost all track of time, had been enough to drive Andrea to her knees in the kitchen floor. She could stay there, for a moment, but she had to get up soon. Soon? Merle would come back from the quick run that he'd made—determined to do it because he was tired of being in the house—to the store for the makings of French toast that he wanted and that he said nobody could make half as good as Andrea could.

For a moment, though, Andrea felt that she needed to stay there, on her knees, and she needed to take a moment to remind herself that they would fix this. They would come through this. They had to.

They'd thought it was the flu. Merle never got sick. At least, he very rarely got sick. Once or twice since they'd been together he'd come down with some cold or another and he'd treated it like the plague because he'd enjoyed being "pampered" by Andrea. He liked his pillows fluffed. He liked his food brought to him. He liked that she hummed and clucked her tongue and rubbed his feet and shoulders. He'd liked having control of the television and having time to put his feet up. But every time she'd ever seen him sick? The fun of pampering was over in two days.

He couldn't sit still any longer than that. He couldn't stand it. After about two days, well or not, he'd shake off her blankets, push away her homemade soup and sandwiches made just as he liked them, and he'd go back to work. He'd go back to the shop that was his love—as much a love to him as she would ever be. He liked to be pampered, but only long enough to make him feel special. Once he started to feel like a burden? Or once he started to feel guilty because he was aware that things weren't getting done? He had to get back to work and he'd heal just as fine with the fresh air as he would "stuck up in this bed".

So this time? When Merle had gotten sick and stayed that way? Andrea had known that something was going on. This wasn't a cold and it wasn't something that Merle was doing for attention. Quite the contrary. Like a wounded animal, he'd been trying to slink off and hide from her. He'd been trying to keep his symptoms to himself. He'd tried to power through them. He'd insisted that he was fine and she was worrying over nothing and he'd tried to simply keep going just as he'd kept going before.

He'd fought her all the way to the doctor. And from there? He'd fought her all the way to the specialist that the doctor had insisted he see.

He'd closed his eyes and plugged his ears and done his very best not to be at all aware of anything that was happening. She'd made his appointments, listened to the doctors with him—or for him, and she'd been the one that had handled everything so far.

Merle? He'd just sat there, eyes and ears closed and head as hard as a rock, and insisted that she was making something out of nothing and doctors were only after their money.

He'd done it for her as much as he'd done it for himself and Andrea knew that too. No matter what they'd said, he'd kept a smile on his face and he'd recited the same words to her that he always did.

"Don't worry, sugar."

It was as simple as that. A command. Don't worry. We've got a long ride ahead of us. There's a long highway for us to travel. It won't always be good, it won't always be easy, but we'll get there—one way or another? We'll get there. Just don't worry about it.

And the strangest part of it all? When he said it, Andrea didn't worry. At least, she didn't worry until the next time that the worry came about.

When she heard the sound of his truck door closing outside and she heard him whistling as he came up the brick walkway that she'd laid and he'd re-laid—insisting she'd done it wrong—Andrea got off the floor. In a hurry, she grabbed a paper towel—the only thing readily available—and blew her nose and then she swiped her fingers at her eyes. She probably looked like a mess, and she wouldn't fool him for a moment, but it was the best that she could do.

When Merle came through the door, he didn't look as tired as he had looked lately, but Andrea knew he was pretty good at putting on a show. He was a natural born actor, even if he'd have been pissed to hear anyone say that. He stopped whistling whatever tune he was keeping up as soon as he closed the door. He looked at her, furrowed his brows, and then his expression softened.

He knew. Of course he did. He could read her. He'd always been able to read her. She could read him too. It was one of the things that had kept them together this long—she could see through his bullshit and he could see through hers.

He plopped the loaf of bread on the counter and Andrea bit back the desire, purely born out of habit of this kind of thing, to lecture him on how to handle soft bread.

"Got'cha a chocolate bar too," Merle commented.

Andrea nodded. That was all the thanks that she could muster at the moment. Some people's husbands said "I love you" once a year with diamonds or cards. Hers? He said it just about every day with a chocolate bar, a car was, an oil change, a new faucet—those were "love presents" from Merle.

Today? It was a chocolate bar that she couldn't even stomach.

"Looks like ya might need it," Merle commented. "On the fuckin' rag? Or you got another damn reason for snottin' all over the kitchen?"

Andrea swallowed, smiling softly to herself at the fact that—sick or not—he was still Merle. Asshole-extraordinaire, perhaps, but he was hers.

"They called," Andrea said.

Merle hummed and nodded.

"I know," he said. "Got me not five minutes ago in the truck."

Andrea opened her mouth, meaning to have something encouraging to say—something wonderful and perfect for the moment—but nothing came out at all. Nothing. It was like she wasn't even getting air into her lungs at the moment so not even the smallest sound could escape her.

Without her having to say anything, though, Merle stepped forward and he pulled her into him. It was one of the bear hugs that she'd come to count on through the years. She sunk into it and he rubbed her back while she tangled her fingers together behind his and held him into place.

"Said we'll go in and see 'em tomorrow," Merle said. "Get me a vacation? Get Daryl to watch the shop. He can run the damn thing a while. I been wantin' some time off."

It was a lie. Merle never wanted time off, even if Daryl could very well run the shop on his own. Still, it was a nice lie. Even if Andrea knew that it was constructed for her benefit, it still worked to comfort her a little.

"It's going to be more than a little time off," she said.

Merle hummed.

"However long," he responded. "Week or a month—don't matter."

Andrea rubbed her face against him and he didn't try to pull away from her. He didn't try to break the hug. He must be able to tell that she needed it.

"Merle..." Andrea said. She stopped and didn't continue speaking until he hummed to prompt her to keep going. "You can't leave me, OK?"

Merle made something of a rumbling noise—a chuckle rolled through his chest and thundered in Andrea's ear from her current position.

"Don't worry, sugar," he said.

Andrea closed her eyes, smiled to herself, and did her best to listen to him—at least for now.


End file.
